Microsoft Sets Up Hut Outside Apple Store To Poach Customers

Figuring that if you can’t bring others’ customers to you, it’s best to go to them, Microsoft is trying to draw interest in its new emporium by setting up a hut outside a Seattle Apple Store. The hut, which is promoting the Xbox 360’s Kinect peripheral, is an attempt to advertise an upcoming Microsoft store to the throngs of iPhone 4S buyers.

GeekWire reports the hut is pretty much a demo kiosk, acting as a carnival barker to get passers-by to try out Microsoft’s voice and motion-sensing device that has been known to destroy morons’ TVs.

Microsoft says traffic at its hut has been brisk, building interest for the new mothership, which will open close to the Apple Store, with only a parking lot separating the two.

But the Kinect doesn’t compete with Apple products. If they were trying to push Windows Phones then outrage would be justified. I’d be outraged just having one used in front of me. Ugh, get an Android phone if you can’t afford an iPhone!

Every Microsoft store I’ve personally seen and every one I’ve seen in a news story has always been very close to an existing Apple store. I had to do a double take the first time I saw one because I’d just walked past the Apple store 2 or 3 doors down, because the Microsoft store looked like a near perfect clone of the Apple store. I was tempted to do a little experiment and see what they did if I walked in and asked about some Apple product.

This is the saddest Microsoft-related story I’ve ever heard. They’ve gone from industry mammoth to being reduced to snatching crumbs off the table of the company they sneered at less than two decades ago.

The first Microsoft Store that opened in Bellevue Square Mall, Washington (about 10 minutes from Bill Gates’s house) is about 4 store-fronts down from the Apple Store. I’ve never seen more than 5 people in it.

First, I don’t see how they could poach iPhone 4S customers. They don’t have a competing product in this “shed”. The Kinect is not related to any existing Apple product.

Second, iPhone buyers are not going to abandon purchasing an iPhone in order to pick up a Microsoft phone. I want to be nice, but Microsoft Phone’s customer base does not overlap much with iPhone’s. Once iPhone users get a look at the Microsoft offerings, they’re only going to get (hopefully polite) rejection. They should focus less on trying to win over Apple customers, and perhaps focus more on people who have an old phone and don’t know anything about the current phone market. At least then they have a chance at making a sale.